ESPN Hunting

This is Part 3 of a six-part series chronicling Steve Bowman's six-day chase of one elusive turkey.
Follow Bowman's Turkey Trek: 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1

Day 2
Good gobblers have a way of haunting a turkey hunter.

I've been fortunate to have killed my share of turkeys, and unfortunate enough to miss my share.

Most often that miss comes with impatience. Turkeys come at their own pace, and if you try and speed that up or even slow it down, you are in for a world of misery.

I've watched turkeys drop from a strut and come running at a full gallop, while others simply hang up and sit right out of range and tease you into becoming impatient.

On opening day, I had become intrigued with a turkey that I just knew was king of the woods. And I hadn't even seen him yet.

His gobble was so strong, so full and so downright brutal that it could only belong to 3-plus year-old bird. Those are the turkeys that typically rule the roost, typically give hunters fits. This one had certainly haunted me since I had last heard him gobble.

After opening morning I had stuck my nose into a couple of patches of woods, heard turkeys, worked turkeys, but none of them sounded quite as dominating as the one roosting at my cabin.

Three days after opening day, I had my first morning to hunt alone.

That was three long days for the gobbler to do his business with the passel of hens he sported as a harem. Three days for me to be haunted. And three days for me to get a whole lot wiser.

This day I would set up within shooting range of the outer edge of the pines, utilizing the short sprigs of sweet gum trees for cover.

At daylight, cardinals began to sing and I was intent on being the first one to gain my gobbler's attention. I eked out a few tree yelps and the turkey answered in the sharp, booming gobble that I had been hearing in my brain.

He was semi-hot. Crows called, owls hooted and he gobbled. I added another set of tree yelps and he double gobbled. Unlike Day One, there wasn't any chiming in of other hens. Hoping I had said enough I laid down my slate call and waited.

Every few minutes he gobbled, at anything and everything. A crow wasn't safe, neither was an owl. He even bellowed at a pair of Canada geese that honked by.

When he hit the ground and gobbled, I was certain that in just a few moments he would be standing in front of me. Instead he skirted the edge of the flooded bottom, not more than 70 yards away and well out of sight behind the brambles, with a troupe of hens.

In desperation, I cut, cackled and called. He gobbled and double gobbled and kept marching away.

My heart sank. This was going to be a flash hunt, where it would either happen in the first hour or so or not. Then I had to head to the office.

Out of time, I slipped out of the silent woods, again thinking of that booming gobble. I drove the whole way home, thinking and scheming a way to get closer to this bird.